everybody is searching for scalable rewards. you know, the kind of reward that keeps on giving. the big one.
let me tell you something friend, if you invest in this thing here, you will be set for life. this is the deal of a lifetime. if you can find your way into this one situation, then you will be fine. how about that movie where the old timers get together for one last heist? the one that will allow them to never work again? did it go smoothly?

do you look at people who play the lottery or scratch-off tickets as being deficient in mathematical understanding? how about musicians who play gig after gig for next to nothing, hoping to one day get the record contract that will pay them big bucks? or the author who is starving until they get a book deal? or the post-doc trying to get the nature paper? or the artist who wants to get a piece into the collection at the MOMA? how about the guy who takes a lot of timelapse movies and posts them to youtube, what lotto is he hoping to win? or grant applications? what are the lotteries i’m planning to win? how can i replace those plans with something more incremental?

so… back to the question. are scalable rewards inherently unsustainable? they are fractal or chaotic or unpredictable. should we working to design any new system or community to be without scalable rewards? or at least we should minimize them? the less scalable the rewards, the more long term sustainable the system will be? more leverage is more scalable is less sustainable?
this is also related to the everyone-is-a-chef idea.

that said, it’s clear that in the near term, scalable rewards do exist and people will continue to hit is rich with them for a while, but maybe we should be working to highlight the slow paths… so if you think you’re placing too much emphasis on a lottery style payback, what is something small you can do to correct your path?